The Banyamulenge Genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Assistant Editor

On the Interplay of Minority Groups’ Discrimination and Humanitarian Assistance Failure

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 11, November 2021

Village in Bibogobogo on fire. Some houses are dotted on a hill surrounded by trees. They are mostly obscured by thick, grey smoke.

Village in Bibogobogo set alight. Photograph by Neri Patrick, taken on October 19, 2021.

Delphin Ntanyoma
Erasmus University

For two weeks now, a humanitarian convoy (five trucks) transporting humanitarian assistance to support the Banyamulenge in Bibogobogo (sometimes spelled Bibokoboko) has been intercepted by administrative and security officials in the city of Baraka [1].Two international humanitarian organizations, including the World Food Program (WFP), that have been working in this region to support displaced and local populations, resolved to support internally displaced Banyamulenge in Bibogobogo. The WFP’s support used an intermediate humanitarian organization, familiar of the context, to provide the assistance. On its way from Uvira to Baraka, rumors circulated that this is not humanitarian assistance but rather that the trucks contained ammunition and guns. Several sources including ones linked to civil society organizations in the region have confirmed that youth in Baraka (who support administrative and security officials) erected barricades to block the trucks. Truck drivers were obliged to unload everything to check what was inside each box. In the end, the search found that there was nothing linked to guns and ammunition. However, the assistance is now stored in Baraka, and it is uncertain if these organizations will be courageous enough to reload and bring the assistance to Bibogobogo. Continue reading →

Politics in the De-politicised: TikTok as a Source of China’s Soft Power

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Assistant Editor

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 11, November 2021

TikTok logo. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Zuza Nazaruk

Last year’s “TikTok war” revealed unprecedented hostility of the US government towards the Chinese tech newcomer. The seemingly innocuous software was developed by ByteDance, a Chinese unicorn company. TikTok is a sister app of Douyin, created for the Chinese market. Both apps allow users to share and watch short videos. In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump accused TikTok of a series of breaches, the most serious of which was sharing user data with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Levine, 2020). Yet, some experts, including Adam Segal from the Council of Foreign Relations, considered the near-ban a smokescreen to hinder the growth of the most globally successful Chinese app to date (Campbell, 2020). In 2020, TikTok was the most downloaded app globally, with 89 million new users just in the US (Geyser, 2021). To date, 23% of Americans use or have watched TikTok, with an average American user having spent 14.3 hours monthly on the app in 2020 (Tankovska, 2021).

Continue reading →

Emerging Market Index: An Interview with Life + Liberty’s Perth Tolle

Posted on November 25, 2021 by Assistant Editor

Journal of Political Risk, Vol.9, No. 11, November 2021

Perth Tolle is depicted smiling in a white shirt and black blazer.

Perth Tolle, the founder of Life + Liberty Indexes and the creator of the Freedom 100 EM Index.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

This JPR interview with Perth Tolle, founder of Life + Liberty Indexes and creator of the Freedom 100 EM Index, was conducted via email between 14 September 2021 and the 25 November 2021.

Corr: Can you please explain what your ETF is for those who have no financial experience?

Tolle: An ETF, or exchange traded fund, is a tradable basket of securities, similar to a mutual fund. But unlike mutual funds, ETFs trade on exchanges, and are known for their transparency, tax efficiency, and lower cost.

Most ETFs track an index. And most indexes are market capitalization weighted – where the biggest companies, and countries, by their market capitalization, get the biggest allocations in the index.

There are three main categories of country classifications for global stocks – developed markets (DM), emerging markets (EM) and frontier markets (FM). Continue reading →